VPN Issues with Virgin

[john_howard]

There are several posts in the forum where people are complaining that VPN does not work with Virgin. There are several replies that agree and several that disagree. I am adding my experience in the hope that someone may get some help from my learnings.

I have a Virgin 20MB Fiber Optic connection and a D-Link DIR-615 Wireless Router and dial into my work's VPN connection using Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client.

My experience is that the VPN connects but access to my work network including shared drives, Sharepoint sites, Exchange and Office Communitor ranges from flakey to not available. Sharepoint works best and Exchange is un-usable.

I have investigated the issues with our support teams and we have confirmed that:

• VPN connects but access is very poor
• PINGs work as do TRACERTs but are intermittent
• this is true for wired and wireless connects alike

However a breakthrough happened tonight. If I disconnect the router and connect directly to the ethernet cable coming out of the cable modem all the problems go away!!!!

If you try to do this please be aware that you need to follow these steps to connect correctly:

1. disable wireless connections on your computer
2. disconnect any ethernet connections to your computer
3. power down your router
4. disconnect the ethernet cable between your cable modem and router
5. power down your modem. Then...
6. wait 30 seconds
7. power on the moden and wait 30 seconds or until the internet light changes to constant green
8. plug the ethernet cable from your modem to your computer
9. wait until a connection to the internet is established
10.   dial into your VPN connection

All VPN connections should now be working correctly.

Conclusion

It is the way the router handles VPN traffic via the virgin cable connection that is the issue rather than the cable connection. God only know why Virgin chose to supply wireless routers that were not VPN compatible (I suspect cost played a part or that they were not tested enough).

Solution(s)

1. Buy a new wireless router
2. Just connect directly via the modem
3. Hope Virgin admit the problem and supply everyone with a new router (about as likely as a the immaculate conception )
4. Complain to D-Link and hope they issue a Firmware update with a patch (slightly more likely than 3)

Good luck - I hope this helps if you are banging your head against a brick wall with VPN that doesn't work and everyone is telling you there is nothing they can do...

[Champs]

Would it more be the user of said router just has not set it up correctly? i.e. port forwarding and stuff.

Im sure to get the most out of any router you buy you would have to change settings on it to optimise what your going to be using it for.

[john_howard]

Said user would be more than happy to try port forwarding but as Virgin don't officially support VPN it is difficult to know which ports to set up.

Wound you be able to provide a list?

Thanks for the reply.

[Champs]

Well I can see a few people have had issues with dlink routers and VPN (just looking on google) One posted on here was to do a firmware upgrade from here

http://www.dlink.co.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Product_C&childpagename=DLinkEurope-GB%2FDLTechProduct&cid=119...

Then

create 2 port forwarding rules for your computers ip address, PPTP application (port 1723 TCP), IPSEC application (port 500 UDP)

That is reading how someone else has fixed it and I hold no responsiblity if you copy and break your router sorry I have to say that.

[Champs]

Scratch that, I dont think the above would work either. However reading further into peoples problems it seems an unofficial firmware update has fixed this for some people have a read here

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=13599.0

Im off now if your still have problems tommorow I will look into it further for you.

[john_howard]

Thanks Champs,

yeah I read about the port forwarding too but didn't try it as several people reported issues. I haven't seen the un official Firmware update so might give that a go.

Cheers again.

[john_howard]

Update:

I tried adding port forwarding as discussed. As we expected this did not help.

I will try uploading the non-official Firmware update tonight and let you know the outcome.

Many thanks for your help so far.

[john_howard · Accepted solution]

---

Champs wrote:

Scratch that, I dont think the above would work either. However reading further into peoples problems it seems an unofficial firmware update has fixed this for some people have a read here

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=13599.0

Im off now if your still have problems tommorow I will look into it further for you.

---

BINGO!

I downloaded the unsupported firmware and it works a treat!! Thanks for your help Champ I couldn't have done this without you.

Of course one has to question the validity of using unsupported software - I guess this invalidates my warrantee and if I need to contact the official Virgin Broadband support I will be keeping very quiet about which firmware the router uses!!

That said I am a very happy bunny because I can finally connect to the work VPN- yay for open source!!!

[john_howard]

Final note.

If you use the unsupported firmware please note that your router admin page will now be available at http://192.168.1.1 insteat of 192.168.0.1 - this fooled me for a few minutes too!

Bye.

[Champs]

Glad to hear John

I believe you can always put the old firmware back on if needed so if you did need to return the router for any purpose I would probably just do that.